Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Why the Moonbats Hate the Conservatives

Got your attention?

The answer to this burning question is far from obvious. And there's many ways to answer the question.

Roger Simon, author and Grand Poohbah of Pajamas Media, recently addressed a subset of this question: Why They Hate the Neocons. Simon, like many of today's conservatives, started out in the 1960s as your standard anti-Vietnam War Lib. And like many of today's conservatives, Simon eventually got disgusted by what the left had become. So much so that he crossed over to the other side, more or less. Which is refreshing, actually, since most of us who've ended up on the right side of the aisle actually do think as opposed to reacting and emoting which are the favored substitutes for reason amongst our moonbat opponents.

For this reason, there are far more flavors of conservative thought than the propagandists in the MSM could ever imagine. They, themselves, pretty much march in lockstep with the standard, left-wing ideology lest they lose their social station which is far more important to them than their friends, their neighbors, or the abstract concept of a "country."

The moonbat left directs particular vitriol toward the subset of conservatism known as neoconservatism, as embodied by the neocons. While many of today's conservatives were not born conservatives (aka "paleocons"), having started out embracing some flavor of leftist politics in their youth, "neocons" happen to have achieved enlightenment because of or in spite of their Jewish faith. How this peculiarity evolved is no longer really worth pursuing. But it probably helps explain at least some of the particular vitriol directed in the "neocon" direction.

In liberal-left circles, it's an article of religious faith that if one is "authentically black," for example, one is a leftist Democrat who can only vote for a leftist Democrat. If it comes out that an "authentically black" person voted for a Republican, that individual will immediately and permanently lose not only social status and all his friends. He will also magically become white and therefore not "authentically black." If you think I'm kidding, ask Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas about it.

Similarly, in the same Marxist clique, it's an article of faith that if you're Jewish, you are therefore of the left. If it somehow should come out that you've crossed the aisle, you have not only betrayed the faith but you have betrayed your race. It's very similar to the dilemma of Clarence Thomas and other like-minded individuals who prefer to choose their politics on their own rather than deal with the forced conformism of race, color, or creed. Thus it is that the far-left has transformed the Marxist concept of "class struggle" into "race struggle" all the better to rationalize their failed philosophy.

That's it in a nutshell. But Roger Simon cuts to the bone. Like Simon, Wonk is a professional writer. But Simon is also a storyteller and has been at this longer than Wonker. So his own explanation for the above phenomenon is well worth examining. It cuts to the bone.

Simon begins with a general observation:

...when I was first publicly called a neoconservative, I had only a vague notion of what it was. Yes, I had heard they were former lefties, some Trotskyites or Trotskyists (another distinction that continues to confuse me), who had switched over to the conservative side and that they favored the promotion of democracy by militant means, when necessary. But that was about it.

But Simon suddenly found himself fascinated by what amounted to neocon thought, which he discovered by reading early neocons before he realized that's what they were. He found them rigorous and professional. And persuasive. And, surprisingly, their thinking initially coincided with a key leftist belief. But, engaging brains, they went further with this concept while the left remained comfortably mired in a simplistic ideology:

As is well known, by the end of the Vietnam War, many of us came to the conclusion there was something seriously wrong with America, largely ignoring the obvious that there will be something wrong with all societies since they are composed of fallible humans. We were the big guys and we were therefore at the greatest fault. And one of the clearest areas of our villainy was that we supported or tolerated right wing dictators like Pinochet, Somoza, the Arab potentates, etc.

Although I didn’t fully realize it then – I considered myself at that point aligned with the New Left – the neocons agreed with that position. They pointed out, however, that in addition, opposition to leftist dictators in China, the Soviet Union and Cuba was justified. Their position against totalitarianism was consistent. Mine, and my friends, was not. We gave a pass to Fidel and company.

A key point.

Then Reagan and Polish Pope John Paul II ganged up on the Soviets:

And then something happened. Eastern Europe started breaking away from the communist world and the Soviet Union fell. Never mind that the reviled Reagan may have had some responsibility, everyone – or at least most everyone - rejoiced. And it wasn’t just a totalitarian system that was dissolving, socialism as an economic system lay in tatters. To call it “scientific” was laughable.

9/11, according to Simon, who's really on target here, put the neocons in the Bush administration firmly in charge, as they pursued the almost ridiculously idealistic notion of solving the problem of Islamofascism by bringing Democracy to the oppressed in the Middle East. Radical and genuinely revolutionary, this became the Bush Doctrine. But the Bush Doctrine, if implemented, would doom the lefties. After all, THEY were the revolutionaries, the idealists. How dare the idiot Bush and the neocon swine in his administration supplant the leftie elite? Ergo, the beginning of the visceral hatred of the moonbats. Accustomed to heading up the elite clique in the perpetual high school of the Sixties Generation, they simply went nuts when they found out all the un-cool kids had taken the keys to the club.

So in those slow motion moments when the 767s crashed into the World Trade Center everything switched around. The cool guys in school were no longer the cool guys. One clique – the leftie, hippie into yuppie, liberal media and showbiz alliance – moved out. Some semi-stodgy ex-Scoop Jackson policy wonks moved in.

Idealism had been stolen from the Left. (In truth, as I indicated, they didn’t have much remaining, but that probably made it all the worse.)

This constituted an insult (in the medical and other senses) to a lot of people’s self-images. The neocons were to be hated because they had stolen that idealism. In a sense, they had stolen those same people’s youths. For a very short period, Abbie Hoffman had morphed into Paul Wolfowitz. The neocons were to be envied then. And no doubt they were.

This was indeed a short period because such a deep insult cannot easily be tolerated.

Again, a brilliant insight by Simon. The medical use of the term "insult" accurately describes the visceral nature of the current and ongoing leftist hatred of Bush, Republicans, and indeed of all normal Americans. But there's more:

Somebody’s ox had been gored. Idealism is the good guy’s province. When your idealism has been stolen, you are no longer the good guy. You are the bad member of the family.

This is good stuff. It explains a lot. We've excerpted a good bit here, but we urge you to follow the link above and get this down. It's what's going on. The popular kids want to be popular again. They don't deserve to be popular anymore. But they don't care. And they're willing to gamble our freedom to get the keys back.